Hey everyone!

Here's my findings from the Week 5 tutorial task! I published a survey about social media use on my Facebook page, and I managed to get an amazing 10 responses! Now I know that 10 responses isn't exactly world-breaking, but from even my small sample I was able to find out some interesting things. Here's the 5 questions I posted: 

1. What social media websites do you use?

2. Roughly how often do you use social media during the day?

3. What do you use social media for the most?

4. Do you regularly check your security settings on your social media profiles?

5. What do you post/talk about most on social media?

And here are the most chosen answers for the survey questions:

1. Facebook (no surprise there)
2. More than 7 times
3. Chatting with friends
4. Regularly/Rarely (interesting, an equal number of people check their setting regularly and don't check them often)
5. How their day was

An interesting finding from the survey is in regards to the frequency of checking security settings on people's social media profiles. It is encouraging that a decent percentage of respondents check their security settings once every few days, but less encouraging that an equal percentage of respondents check their security settings once every few months! If I was to write an essay about social media I would definitely go in-depth about security checking. Because social media is such a public forum, anyone can see what you post about if your security settings aren't up to scratch. A perfect example of this is when someone's Facebook page is either private or public. My page is private, so only friends can look at it. However, if it was public, anyone could look at the fun and engaging stuff I put on there. It only took a quick Google search to find another survey about social media security by Pew Research (http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2013/Teens-Social-Media-And-Privacy.aspx). The survey found that most young people aren't that concerned about businesses and advertisers accessing their information, and sadly this seems inevitable, even if your page is private. Is it even possible to have privacy on Facebook? I don't think so. Let me know what your thoughts on this are everyone! 

Thanks! 

Madden, M., Lenhart, A., Cortesi, S., Gasser, U., Duggan, M., Smith, A., & Beaton, M., 2013, "Teens, Social Media, and Privacy", Retrieved from: http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2013/Teens-Social-Media-And-Privacy.aspx, Viewed 27 August, 2013.